December 06, 2011

Nucleus Research: Top 10 Technology Predictions for 2012

Back in October, Nucleus Research (Boston) announced its Top 10 Technology Predictions for 2012. Now that I am well into my trends research for 2012, I thought I’d blog about the Nucleus list.

Nucleus believes there will be an overall increase in IT spending in 2012 as companies start allocating more budget towards technology in order to meet business goals. However, Nucleus cautions that the European banking crisis and the US budget debate remain as key issues in the overall global economy.

As far as technology trends and themes, the cloud, mobility, and big data are a few of the trends driving Nucleus's 2012 predictions. The ten predictions (and my summary) is below:

Productive Enterprise: The most successful firms in 2012 will be those that integrate technologies like mobile and social software in order to maximize the productivity of employees

The Cloud Changes Development: Nucleus says that the cloud will make development even more virtual as CIOs will not care where the developer is as long as good code is delivered on time.

SAP Reemerges: Nucleus expects SAP to leverage recent innovations like mobile device access and cloud delivery in order to create more customer value

Big Beats Best-of-Breed: Tech buyers are expected to increasingly look to big tech vendors for their solutions as usability, integration and TCO become more valued criteria in buying decisions.

More Ways for All to Manage Big Data: Businesses will increasingly turn to advanced analytics to draw insights out of the growing mounds of data.

Capital Moves from Labor to Technology: Given a choice, firms will spend more on technology in 2012 than on labor, hopefully improving the productivity of the existing workforce rather than adding to it.

The Decade of Smarter Software: Nucleus expects to see more intelligent applications that anticipate, search for, analyze, and push dashboard information to worker’s desktop.

Labor Finally Gets Optimized: According to Nucleus, businesses will use tools to help them figure out which employees are the most productive, show up on time, create the least scrap, and book the most sales.

Healthcare Investments Increase: Nucleus says that in 2012 Healthcare organizations will invest in data capture devices and services and electronic records management applications, spurred on by Government incentives.

Renewed Focus on the Customer Experience: Nucleus expects strong investment in CRM and related applications in 2012, as companies seek to retain their most profitable customers and attract new ones

Predictions 1, 6, and 8 all seem inter-related and could probably have been combined. Regarding number 9, while I’d love to see a surge in healthcare investments, I believe EHR will continue to have a slow adoption cycle.